Well! The doody hit the you-know-what over by Maxine’s place the other night. Seems Stan was passing the time with some of the fellows from the Badger Lodge, when he came across a new game with which to preoccupy himself – dice. Zap, to be exact, the game in which you roll three of a kind, four, straights, and so on, and if by chance you come up with zip, you say, “zap!” and give up your turn. Some say that in shady dice parlors, players use stronger language than that, but “zap” gets the message across. So as I was saying, Stan became a regular Zap dynamo, rolling those babies like there was no tomorrow, and before you know it, he’s telling Harry about it the next day. Now, you know Stan, he’s got a heart of gold, but he’s not so bright sometimes. And Harry may not see so good since the war, but he’s sharp as a tack, he sees this so-called “zap” for what it is, a cheap come-on, a scam, a gateway to the gambling fever. If he lets Stan continue in this vein, why, he might start out rolling for pennies, but soon he’ll be playing quarters, then dollars, and where do you go from there but a life of cheap cigars, sour brandy and loose women, sleeping in the gutter! No, no, Harry couldn’t let his old pal down. Soon as Stan’s off the telephone, Harry rushes next door to Maxine. Maxine realizes right off the bat that this is blasphemy, or heresy – a sin of some high order, anyway – and she sets the stage. So that evening, Stan shows up for their regular night of bridge. They’re playing three-handed, Stan playing dummy. Well, naturally Stan starts babbling about Zap, how fun it is, until Harry says, “Why, Stan, I thought being an upright citizen meant something to you! But I suppose I was mistaken.” Stan blinks, like, and Maxine replies, “Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were ‘up’ on marijuana!” And before Stanley can say anything, their old pal Ethel from down the street, who just recently recovered from bein’ dead, but Stan wasn’t wise to that, she comes moaning and groaning out from under the table wearing a muslin curtain from Maxine’s hope chest, crying, “Stannnnleeeey… Where’s your morals, Stannnnleeeey…” Why, Stan’s so overcome by this display that he yells out, “By gum, Ethel, you’re right! Can you ever forgive me?” So Ethel takes off the curtain and says she does forgive Stan, and Harry claps him on the back and says he’s glad Stan saw the error of his ways, and Maxine brings out a big tray of devilled eggs and pickles she made up just for Stan’s salvation. Ethel sticks around for a hand, but she has a date with that tall fellow, so that still leaves them without a fourth next Tuesday. Do you play?

Copyright 2006 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.

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